Mystery Evidence On Prof Doubted

April 19, 2000|By JODY A. BENJAMIN Staff Writer

A federal judge in Miami is weighing whether a former university professor jailed for three years because of secret evidence that he has ties to a terrorist group shall go free or remain behind bars while he fights deportation.

Mazen Al Najjar, 42, a former Arabic teacher at the University of South Florida in Tampa who has lived in the United States 20 years, was arrested by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for overstaying a student visa.

Since then an immigration judge and the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled Al Najjar should not be released after seeing evidence that he raised funds for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization.

On Monday attorneys for Al Najjar, who denies involvement with the group, argued he has not been told exactly what evidence the government has against him and given an opportunity to refute it -- a basic constitutional right.

U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, who said she has not looked at the evidence, said before a packed courtroom she will issue a written decision. She did not say when.

On Tuesday, about 70 supporters of Al Najjar traveled from Tampa to Miami to hold a protest outside the court. They carried signs and wore T-shirts with the professor's image reading "Free Mazen Al Najjar."

The American Civil Liberties Union and allied groups filed suit on his behalf in December, choosing Miami because it is INS regional headquarters.

"The government's argument is that an alien has no rights to liberty," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued on behalf of Al Najjar.

"Our argument is that every person has an interest in being free. The government does not have the right to detain people at will," said Cole, who successfully fought the use of secret evidence in immigration cases in New York and New Jersey.

INS attorneys argued that Al Najjar is not entitled to due process when it comes to being released from jail, since immigration courts have already decided he should be deported.

"It is not a question of liberty in the abstract," said attorney Ethan Cantor. "It is liberty regarding this alien in these circumstances requesting this privilege."

Al Najjar's supporters are encouraged by the two recent federal court decisions in New York and New Jersey that the use of secret evidence to detain suspects is unconstitutional. Lenard is not obliged to follow those precedents, though she could find them persuasive.

Last October, Palestinian immigrant Hany Kiareldeen was freed after being held 19 months. Immigration officials in that case had accused Kiareldeen of meeting in his home with one of the men who was later convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A New Jersey judge found the evidence flimsy.

Similarly, Nasser Ahmed, an Egyptian once associated with radical cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, was released in November from federal jail in lower Manhattan after a federal judge in New York barred the government from using secret evidence.

Nationwide about 20 immigrants are being held with classified evidence, most of them men of Arabic descent who are being held pending deportation, according to the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

"Dr. Al Najjar is a victim of a horrible process that I think is slowly coming to an end in this country," said Howard Simon, director of the Florida chapter of the ACLU.

On Tuesday, the gray-bearded Al Najjar sat quietly through the 2 hour proceeding.

Al Najjar is appealing his deportation to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was born in Gaza in the West Bank, but Egypt, the last place he lived, will not take him back. So, his lawyers say, he has no place to go.

A father of three U.S.-born girls, Al Najjar was arrested at his Tampa home in May 1997.

While at USF, he was involved with a think tank. Another member of that think tank, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, left Tampa and took over leadership of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Government officials say the now-defunct organization was a front for abetting Middle East terrorists.

After the hearing Al-Najjar's wife, Fedaa, weaved through a crowd of lawyers carrying one of the couple's daughters in an attempt to embrace her husband. She, in a separate proceeding, has also been ordered deported for overstaying her visa. A security guard blocked her path. "No, " he said, "you may not hug him."

Sun-Sentinel researcher Kathryn Pease contributed to this report.

Jody A. Benjamin can be reached at jbenjamin@sun-sentinel.com or 954-356-4530.